Campbell Praised For Lowering Sodium in Soup, Juice

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Campbell Soup Company, long a bastion of high sodium products, is drawing praise from the Center for Science in the Public Interest for significantly reducing the sodium levels in some of its products and for introducing a number of lower-sodium versions.

"It's rare for companies to acknowledge consumer demand for foods lower in salt, rarer still for companies to act on that," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. "Campbell is expanding its customers' choices. I hope that other food manufacturers follow suit."

According to CSPI, Americans are consuming twice as much sodium as is healthy, and are therefore suffering from higher rates of hypertension, heart attacks, and strokes. In 2004, the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and two colleagues estimated that cutting the sodium content of packaged and restaurant foods by 50 percent could save 150,000 lives per year. Last year, CSPI petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to set reasonable limits for its use in packaged foods.